It 242 Wk 7 Cp

IT/242

Week 7 Check Point

Kenneth D. Sheldon

Firewall

University of Phoenix

Firewalls work on either the network layer or the application layer. Each firewall’s name basically describes how they protect the network or what they do. These three types are Circuit Gateway filters, Application, and Packet Filters.

Packet filtering

Packet filtering is the most basic and is amongst the first protections in protecting internal users from the external network. What this firewall does is allows packets to pass based on your firewall policy. Packet filtering can be set into two parts; stateless and stateful packet filtering.

Stateless packet filtering does not remember information about the passing packets. Since there is no information stored it can be easily fooled by hackers. With stateful packet filtering the firewall will remember information about prior packets.

Circuit Gateway filtering

Circuit Gateway filtering can reassemble, examine or block all incoming packets. The Circuit Gateway firewall protects the TCP or UDP connection and has the capability of Virtual Private Network (VPN) over the internet via encryption from firewall to firewall.

Application Level

Application level firewalls can prevent traffic from passing directly between networks and function at, of course, application level. This firewall can allow user logs while protecting against malicious software. It also block of websites based on content, not just IP address.

In my opinion, the best choice of the three would be a combination of circuit and application firewall. This would mean that the firewall would be able to keep logs of activity and be able to block content while protecting data from passing into the network which may corrupt integrity. However if I had to choose just one, I would choose circuit to protect all computers on the network.

References:

Business Data Communications, Sixth Edition, by William Stallings. Published by Prentice Hall. Copyright © 2009 by Pearson Education, Inc....